


twenty-six strikes

by ElasticElla



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25562377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/pseuds/ElasticElla
Summary: Andy is in Rwanda when her mark comes in.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 76
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	twenty-six strikes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labocat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/gifts).



Andy is in Rwanda when her mark comes in. It stabs through her shoulder, the shock nearly makes her drop her axe mid-swing. 

After thousands of years – but she can’t check it now, there are people depending on her, men fighting her. Try as she might, she loses count of the stabs, can only estimate they will intersect in a decade to four. 

It feels unreal. 

Days later, mission complete and staying low in a no name hotel, Andy’s fingers tremble over the bare mark. She can’t remember the last time her body held a blemish. She knew immortals could have soulmates – Joe and Nicky, Booker and his late wife – but they didn’t have to. Hell, it was part of what made her and Quynh so strong against the world; a free choice, a love without limits or prescription. 

(Only Andy stopped looking, made her own limits, broke a promise and moved on.) 

She presses her thumb into the mark as though it might grant her answers. As though she didn’t allow herself to become distracted before: if she truly wanted to know the year of their meeting, she would have it. 

Oh how closely self-sabotage and preservation twine, fuck, she’s been drinking with Joe too much for such flowery thoughts.

Whoever, whatever, it is – she doesn’t need it. She’s tired, old bones would be creaking if they could under the weight of her memories. 

.

Twenty-six years later the new immortal stabs her in the precise spot the mark lays. It sets her blood ablaze. Relief nearly douses everything, the kid isn’t going to die in a blink. She’d been terrified of her soulmate being close to death, of finding them once it was already too late. 

There’s no mark on the kid’s forehead. 

Thousands of years she was at peace being unmarked. A mere two decades with it, and she’d fallen into society’s trap of ideal bondmates without question. 

Foolish. More so for the tingling disappointment, the mark probably denotes she’ll mentor the kid. 

The questions are typical enough of a new one, she likes that the kid doesn’t hold back her judgment or faith. 

Andy wakes up restrained, impressed with her, might goad her a bit into a fight. Soldier’s good, better than the guys even with her youth, she’s been trained well. Doesn’t rely on her immortality at all, and if Andy has things her way, never will – will become the most lethal of all of them. 

She gets her in the face, and Andy grabs her chin in retaliation, holds her up off the ground. Fuck, she’s beautiful. 

She gets her again, keeps pushing after Andy says they’ve finished. Andy breaks an arm, breaks a leg, finally snaps the kid out of it. 

Trades a compliment for a name, Nile. It suits her. 

“This is real,” Nile murmurs, awed. 

Andy thinks it’s the healing at first, her bones disappearing under her arm once more. But Nile’s shoving her pant leg up with wide eyes, a jagged line underneath her knee. 

“It’s you.” 

Fuck. So it is. 

.

They fuck all over abandoned buildings and in the car, have nothing better to do while Booker searches for where Nicky and Joe were taken. The mark – not herself – the bloody mark, aches for more. Is only barely sated with their couplings, desires everything from Nile. Wants to spend an eternity curled around her, to introduce Nile to all the world has to offer, to rediscover it herself. 

Ironic, given Andy’s rather certain her immortality faded as Nile’s blossomed. 

When Nile’s stab is slow to heal, Andy assumed the delay was based on the mark. Even with all the research that’s gone into them, there are still millions of questions as to how they work, and each seem to have their own individual quirks. 

Then the bullet wound doesn’t heal on its own. 

It isn’t subtle. 

“You’re dying,” Nile says over breakfast, just the two of them. 

“We all are kid.” 

“No,” Nile snaps, up in her face. “You tell me I’m immortal, you can’t turn back – you’re _mine_.” 

Lips crash into hers, strawberries and black coffee, and Andy pulls Nile into her lap. Thumbs away the tear that drips down between their cheeks, Nile looking at her as though she might drop dead any second. 

“Have a little faith, yeah?” Andy tries. 

It gets her a watery laugh, Nile holding her tight. 

“Okay.”


End file.
